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Re: a BIRTHDAY proposal?
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Dear Anthony,
In his "Speak, Nabokov", Michaël Maar discusses this and is of the opinion that VN was intimately concerned by this theme and that he progressively lowered his guard (from "Ada" on) and finally indulged himself in TOOL.
You say that he is not honest and that his readers are entitled to expect honesty: I don't think so. Nobody could be "honest" about such a thing and we, readers are not his judges, are not in any way "entitled" to expect a full confession from him.
He conveyed through his fiction all he had to say on the subject.
Besides, there are other themes than the paedophilic one, such as "the good woman" (Disa, Clare Bishop, Zina), or "the dangerous woman" (Nina Lecerf, Margot, The queen (I forget her name) in KQK) and others, to which he frequently returns, too.
As for VN's kindness, the way I feel is that he was as kind as John Shade and as insufferable as Kinbote. this is, I think, what PF is about.
"Human life can be compared to a person dancing in a variety of forms around his own self" (Transparent Things)
Carolyn,
I think it is difficult to find evidence of kindness because true kindness is often invisible: it is of the kind VN described in Lucette's keeping company to the Robinsons just before committing suicide, or Disa's being kind to a servant despite her discovering yet another proof of Kinbote's infidelity.
Laurence Hochard
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:30:06 -0400
From: STADLEN@AOL.COM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] a BIRTHDAY proposal?
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Dear Carolyn,
It was a serious response (though not intended for his birthday -- that was an editorial idea). I agree that these are apparently rather pitiful pieces of evidence for his lovingkindness, and an extermination-camp commandant could doubtless provide apparently equivalent or better evidence. But I am somehow convinced of VN's basic true kindness, as opposed to the sentimental "kindness" of the commandant. I was dismayed that I could think of no better evidence than these two feeble examples. Perhaps I am too easily swayed by VN's explicitly stated love of kindness and dislike of cruelty, but they always struck me as genuine.
What I find most questionable, or at least puzzling, is his insistence that "Lolita" is "pure" and "abstract", so utterly removed from his own concerns, whereas his most casual references in interviews, and other parts of his oeuvre, so frequently return quite (to me) unexpectedly and arbitrarily to the paedophilic theme, like a sore thumb. I am dismayed not so much by the apparent obsession as by the suspicion that he is simply not honest here, when one feels that in an interview, especially one prepared to be read from index cards, his readers are entitled to expect honesty -- the truth, even if not necessarily the whole truth. It is true that he said art itself is a form of deception, but surely we are entitled to expect that his writings and interviews about himself and his art should not be.
I am surprised that there appears to have been no discussion of this. What do others think?
Anthony Stadlen
Anthony Stadlen
"Oakleigh"
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Email: stadlen@aol.com
Visit: "Existential Psychotherapy & Inner Circle Seminars" at http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/
In a message dated 26/04/2010 22:12:49 GMT Daylight Time, chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET writes:
Dear Anthony,
Is this a serious response to my question? Or, as seems more likely, a joke? I mean I can think of several horrifying dictators who can come up with better examples of kindness (especially to animals) than these! You know who was a vegetarian, after all.
So far I have to say the Nabokovian soul isn't doing too well.
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